Water scarcity and unpredictability are big challenges for countries, corporations, and people. More and more, we will have to dedicate increasing amounts of resources to secure our water. A big portion of that money will go to traditional infrastructure, and most likely a significant part of that spending may be more expensive than investing in existing assets, like nature.
There is a more cost-effective alternative: investing in nature can prevent further deterioration of water sources, allowing us to make better use of existing infrastructure. We might very well see that over the long-run the best investment opportunity for everyone might be letting nature do its work. We are watching this happen in Latin America, where we are working with natural solutions and strengthening natural infrastructure by protecting and restoring the lands where our water comes.
Latin America has approximately 31% of the planet’s water; it is rich in water, but it is unevenly distributed. From Mexico to Argentina, there have been important efforts to improve access to potable water through traditional infrastructure and better management. However, these efforts might be insufficient if we consider the growing impact of recurring droughts and scarcity due to climate change, landscape transformation, and increasing demand by people and industries. Moreover, 30 million people lack access to safe drinking water.
It’s true that the poorest regions suffer the most from water scarcity, but this is a major cost for every country in terms of less growth and prosperity. Like humans, ecosystems depend on water, but they also function in ways that help us against some of our water challenges. Investing in nature so it may continue providing the services we depend on benefits not just ecosystems and communities, but our cities and economies as well. The first step to transform mindsets and expand investment in natural infrastructure is to share this information with decision makers, so that they know about the opportunity and potential nature offers when it comes to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of water security.
For many years top scientists and experts from the Nature Conservancy have studied how to improve nature’s capacity to face water insecurity. There’s proof that nature can play a critical role in keeping our water infrastructure systems functional and in many cases it can do so at lower operational and capital costs than traditionally built solutions.
Based on this premise and with the support of the Latin America Conservation Council – a group of business and political leaders with strong links to the region who call for protecting nature and effectively managing its resources for the sustainable prosperity of future generations – we analysed the enabling conditions for nature to become a competitive solution for water security. Parameters like flow patterns, watershed conditions and socioeconomic investment capacity were used to evaluate the potential of Latin America’s largest cities (over 1 million inhabitants) with the highest potential return on investment to more effectively alleviate water challenges by channeling resources to natural infrastructure, especially through reforestation, restoring rivers and similar water systems, and sustainable practices in agriculture and livestock.
The team of experts identified 25 cities with the highest potential or where it makes the most sense to secure water by protecting nature. A similar analysis was carried out by the Nature Conservancy’s global water team in November of 2015, to scope more than 500 cities around the world and establish the global potential for where investing in natural infrastructure is a feasible and cost-efficient option to address local water challenges.
To maximise the impact of such investments science can be applied to select and prioritise areas of the watersheds to be conserved as to maximise results, as well as developing and implementing specific conservation actions to improve nature’s capacity to capture and infiltrate water or to reduce sediments, or to regulate flows either during heavy rains or during low-flow conditions.
Water Funds are a good example of putting this at work. They are private-public partnerships where water users, authorities and society work together to functionally and financially link downstream beneficiaries – such as cities – with upstream landowners and communities who are stewards for natural infrastructure.
Water Funds provide an effective mechanism to guide programs and policy implementation through investing in natural infrastructure, with good governance and multi-sector engagement. The model has support from the Inter-American Development Bank, the Global Environment Facility, FEMSA Foundation and The Nature Conservancy, through the Latin American Water Funds Partnership, that has created 18 of these funds throughout the region, and raising almost $90m to finance water shed conservation programs in cities. These actions potentially benefit approximately 60 million people and their livelihoods.
There is an international consensus that a water crisis might be on top of the list of the global risks for the next decades. This isn’t something that concerns environmentalists only. Governments, companies and civil society are also aware of this. Conditions with a direct effect on society like scarcity, declining quality or unprecedented water flows, have a direct effect on society because they limit access to water and increase delivery infrastructure costs. Cities and decision makers have access to better information and tools for better policies, for smart investments to secure water today for a more sustainable development. And Latin America is leading the way to achieve it.
Content on this page is paid for and provided by FEMSA Foundation, a sponsor of theGuardian Global Development Professionals Network.
